"Won't be any left for your coffee," Hhuha said. "Never mind, give it to her," Iaehh said. "I'm running late as it is. I'll have something at the office."
"You wouldn't be running late if you'd gotten up when the alarm clock rang."
And they were off again about another favorite subject: the routine ignoring and silencing of the dreadful little bedside ra'hio that spouted news reports at them all hours of the day and night, but especially in the morning, when it began its recitation with a particularly foul and repetitive little buzzer. Rhiow was always glad when they turned it off… though this morning she had to admit she had been pleased enough, while it was still on, to hear it fail to mention anything terrible happening in Grand Central overnight. "Oh, thank you," she said, and purred, as Hhuha bent down and poured the milk.
"Hey, don't bump the hand that feeds you, my puss; the milk's going to go all over the floor."
"I'll take care of that, don't you worry," Rhiow said, and drank.
Hhuha and Iaehh went back toward the bedroom, still arguing genially. It was barely argument, really: more like what People called f'hia-sau, or "tussle," where any blows struck were affectionate, the claws were carefully kept in, teeth did not break skin, and the disagreement, if it really was one, was replayed more as a pastime than anything else. They really are so like us, some ways, Rhiow thought, finishing the milk and sitting up to wash her face. I wonder if you could teach them Ailurin, given enough time? Repeating one word enough times, in the right context, until they got it…
"Bye, honey," Hhuha said, and as she passed through the living room, "bye, puss, have a nice day…"
"From your mouth to the Queen's ear," Rhiow said as the front door closed behind her, and meaning it most fervently.
She was still washing when Iaehh came out of the bedroom in his "formal" sweats, with his office clothes and his briefcase over his shoulder in a backpack. "Byebye, plumptious one," he said, heading for the door. "Don't eat all that food at once, it's got to last you…"
Rhiow threw a meaningful look at the bowl full of reeking tuna, but it was lost on Iaehh: he was halfway out the door already. It clicked shut, and one after another came more clicks as he locked the other locks.
"Plumptious" again. Is he trying to say I'm putting on weight?
Hmm.
Rhiow sighed, finished her wash, and went out her own door, into the warm, ozony air, heading for the rooftops.
* * *
Half an hour later she caught up with Urruah at the Bear Gate to Central Park. There were actually two sets of statues there— one of three bears, one of three deer— but from the predator's point of view, it was naturally the bears that mattered.
" 'Luck," Rhiow said, as they breathed one another's breath. "Oh, Urruah, not more MhHonalh's!"
He wrinkled his face a little, an annoyed expression. "I thought I got all the tartar sauce off that fish thing first."
"All this fried food… it's going to catch up with you one day."
"You should talk. What kind of oil are they packing that tuna cat food in? Smells like it comes out of somebody's crankcase."
Rhiow thought privately that, for all she knew, he was right…. They walked into the park, heading southward along the broad paved expanse of its roadway loop, staying well to one side to miss the ehhif on Rollerblades and the ehhif with strollers. "You sleep well last night?"
"Considering where we're going today?" Urruah said. "What do you think?… I kept hearing Saash dreaming all night. Her nerves are in shreds."
Rhiow sighed. "I missed that. Guess my little chat with the Whisperer tired me out."
"Well, I had one, too." Urruah sighed. "I'm well enough stocked with spells: right up against the limit, I'd say. My head feels twice its normal size."
Rhiow waved her tail in agreement. "We'll have to spend a little time coordinating before we head down… make sure none of us are carrying duplicates."
They made good time down through the park, heading to a level about even with the streets in the upper Sixties. There, a huge stage had been erected at the southern end of the big green space that city People called somewhat ironically Eiuev, the Veldt, and which ehhif called the Sheep Meadow. It wasn't sheep milling around in it now, though, but what looked like about five hundred ehhif dealing with the technical and logistical end of preparing for a meeting of many thousands: cables and conduits being laid and shielded, scaffolding secured, sound systems tested. The squawks and hisses and feedback-howls of mispositioned speakers and other equipment had been echoing for blocks from the park since fairly early in the morning, making it sound as if a herd of large, clumsy, and very broken-voiced beasts were staggering around the place and banging into things. "They're doing sound checks now, though," Urruah said.
"Sound," Rhiow said, wincing slightly at yet another yowl, "wouldn't seem to be a problem."
"No, that was accidental. It'll be voices they're checking, soon. Come on."
They slipped close, behind one of the larger trees that stood at the bottom border of the meadow, and which was behind the security cordons still being erected, a maze of orange nylon webbing stretched from tree to tree. There were plenty of small openings in it so that Rhiow and Urruah had no trouble stepping through and making their way close to the stage, under one of the big scaffolding towers.
A great crowd of ehhif, in T-shirts and shirtsleeves, were already sitting around tuning their instruments, making a scraping and hooting cacophony that made Rhiow shake her head once or twice. "It's the Metropolitan Opera's orchestra, without the first chairs," Urruah said.
Rhiow blinked, since all the chairs seemed to be there. "Smart of them to start early," she said. "They'll miss the heat."
Urruah sighed. "I wish I could," he said. In hot weather, the thickness of his coat often bothered him.
"So do a little wizardry," Rhiow said. "Cool some of this wind down: keep a pocket of it for yourself."
"Naah," Urruah said. "Why waste the energy?… Look, it's starting—"
Rhiow craned her neck as the musicians quieted down a little. The ehhif who appeared was not the one in the poster, though, but a short, round, curly-haired tom, who came to stand in front of the orchestra with a small stick or wand in his hand. Rhiow peered at that. "He's not one of us, is he?"
Urruah stared at him. "The conductor? Not that I know." He cocked his head to one side, briefly listening to the Whisperer, and then said, "No, she says not.— Here he comes!"
On the stage above the musicians, a big burly figure appeared, also in a shortsleeved shirt and dark pants. Rhiow supposed that as ehhif went, he was handsome enough; he had a surprising amount of facial fur. He stepped up to the front of the stage, exchanged a few words with the small round ehhif: there was some subdued shuffling and tapping of bows on strings among the musicians.
The small round ehhif made a suggestion, and the larger ehhif nodded, stepped back to find his right position on the stage. For a few moments there was more howling and crackling of the sound system; then quiet. The conductor-ehhif raised his wand.
Music started. It sounded strange to Rhiow, but then most ehhif music did. Urruah, though, had all his attention fixed on the big ehhif, who suddenly began to sing.
The volume was surprising, even without mechanical assistance: Urruah had been right about that, at least. Rhiow listened to about a minute's worth of it, then said to Urruah, low, "So tell me: what's he yowling about?"
"The song's called 'Nessun dorma.' It means that no one's going to sleep."
"With that noise," Rhiow said, "I could understand why not…."
"Oh, come on, Rhi," said Urruah, "give it a chance. Listen to it."
Rhiow sighed, and did. The harmonies were strange to feline ears and didn't seem to want to resolve correctly; she suspected no amount of listening was likely to change that perception soon, for her anyway. But at least her knowledge of the Speech made meaning available to her, if nothing else, as the man stood and sang with passion approaching a tom
's of his hope and desire, alone here under the starlight…. When the stars' light faded and the dawn rose up, he sang, then he would conquer… though at the moment, who or what would be conquered wasn't quite clear: the song itself hadn't yet provided much context. Perhaps some other tom? There did seem to be a she-ehhif involved, to whom this tom sang— though there was no sign of her at the moment, she being out of sight in the story, or the reality, or both. That at least was tomlike enough: an empty place, the lonely silent night to fill with song, whether or not there was any chance of fulfillment. Or perhaps, Rhiow thought as he sang, it's the she herself, the one he woos, that he's intending to conquer. If there was more intended to the conquest than just sex, though, the thought made Rhiow smile a little. Toms who tried domination or other such maneuvers with their mates too soon after the act itself got nothing but ragged ears and aching heads for their trouble.
It was a little odd, actually, to hear such power and passion come from someone standing still on a bare stage, holding, not a she, but only a piece of cloth in one hand, which he kept using to wipe his face. He paused a moment, and behind him the recorded voices of some other ehhif sang sweetly but mournfully that he and they might all very well be dead in the morning if he didn't conquer…. Yet the tom-ehhif sang on with assurance and power, answering them fearlessly; his last note, amplified rather beyond need, made Rhiow put her ears down flat for the loudness of it rather than the tone, which was blindingly true, and went on for longer than seemed possible with even such a big chest's breath. Rhiow was almost unwillingly held still by the long, cried note at the end of the conquer-word, vinceeeeeeeerrro! as if by teeth in her scruff; alien as the sound was, any cat-tom who had a voice of such power would rightly have had his choice of shes.
The ehhif let the note go. The last chords of accompaniment crashed to an end, and the technical staff responded, some of them, with a chorus of good-natured hoots and applause. After that torrent and slam of sound, the hoots of horns and the city's rush seemed a little muted.
The ehhif spoke a few words to the short round curly-haired ehhif conducting the musicians, then waved the cloth casually at the technical people and retreated to the back of the stage to have a long drink from a bottle of water. The ehhif conducting the musicians turned to talk to them now, and Rhiow looked a little sidewise at Urruah, a feline gesture of reluctant agreement. "It reminds me a little," she said, "of the part in the Argument when the Old Tom sings. Innocent, though he's all scars: and hopeful, though he knows whose teeth will be in his throat shortly."
Urruah nodded. "That's one connection I've thought of, yes…."
"I can see why they'll need all these fences," Rhiow said as they got up and strolled away. "The she-ehhif would be all over him afterward, I'd think. Probably wear him out for any more singing."
"They don't, though. It's not meant personally."
"That's the strangest part of it, for me," Rhiow said. "I don't understand how he can sing like that and have it not be personal. That was real fighting stuff, that last note. He should have had his claws in someone's guts, or his teeth in someone else's scruff, afterward."
Urruah shook his own head as well. "They're not us. But later on in the story, there's a fight."
"Another tom?"
"No, in the story this tom fights with the queen. She has this problem, see…"
Rhiow half-closed her eyes in good-natured exasperation, for he was off and running again. Like most toms, Urruah had trouble grasping how, for queens, the fascination with song in any of its forms was strictly seasonal. When you were in heat, a tom's voice was, admittedly, riveting, and the song it sang spoke directly to your most immediate need. Out of heat, though, the tendency was to try to get away from the noise before you burst out laughing at the desperate, impassioned cacophony of it— a reaction not at all appreciated by the toms near a queen in heat, all deep in the throes of competitive artistic and erotic self-expression.
Most of Urruah's explanation now went over Rhiow's head, as they walked back uptown, but at least he had something to keep his mind off what the rest of the day's work was going to involve. He finished with the tale of the tom fighting with the queen— after which the queen apparently surrendered herself to the tom (What a crazy fantasy, Rhiow thought)— and started in on some other story, many times more complicated, that seemed to involve a river, and a piece of some kind of metal. "And when you take this piece of metal and make it into a hring, it makes you master of the universe…."
Rhiow had to laugh at that. "Ehhif? Run the universe? Let alone the world… What a dream! They can't even run the parts of it they think they do run. Or at least none of them who aren't wizards seem able to. Look at them! Half of the ehhif on the planet go to bed with empty stomachs: the other half of them die of eating themselves sick…." She gave Urruah a cockeyed look. "And what about your great ehhif-tom there? No way he's that size naturally. What does he mean by smothering a wonderful voice like that with ten fur coats' worth of fat? Whichever ehhif-god is in charge of mistreating one's gifts should have a word with him. Probably will, too, if he doesn't get off his great tail and do something about it pretty soon."
Urruah began muttering something vague about the artistic temperament. Rhiow immediately perceived that this was something Urruah had noticed, and it bothered him, too. "Well, look," she said. "Maybe he'll get himself straightened out. Meanwhile, we're almost at the Met. They'll be on the steps, if I know Saash. Anything you need to tell me about today's work before we meet up with them?"
He stopped, looked at her. "Rhi…"
She let him find his words.
"How do you cope?" he said finally. "My memory's not clouded about last time. We almost died, all three of us. Now we're going to have to go down there again— and it may even be the same place this time. Am I wrong?"
"No," Rhiow said, "I don't think so. It could well be the same spot: the gate we're servicing this time has its roots in the same catenary."
"It could be an ambush," he said. "Another sabotage, better planned than the last. Certainly the problem's more serious. If someone caused it on purpose, they'd know a service team would have to be down there very quickly. Not like the last time, where there was enough slack in the schedule that we might have come down any time during the space of a week or two. Half the lizards in Downside could be waiting there for us."
"It's a thought I've considered," Rhiow said. "Though the Whisperer didn't seem to indicate it was going to be quite that dangerous. She usually gives you a hint…"
"…If she knows," Urruah said.
There was that too. Even the gods were sometimes caught by surprise…. " 'Ruah," Rhiow said, "I'm as well prepared as I can be. So are you. Saash will be, as well."
"That leaves only Arhu," Urruah muttered. "And what he might do, I'll bet the gods don't know, either. Irh's balls, but I wish we could dump him somewhere."
"Don't get any ideas," Rhiow said. "He may save your skin yet."
Urruah laughed. They looked at each other for a moment more, then made their way around to the steps of the Met.
Saash and Arhu were waiting for them in the sunshine, or rather, Saash was sitting scratching herself and putting her fur in order, alternately, and Arhu was tearing back and forth across the steps, sidled, trying to trip the ehhif going up and down. Fortunately, he was falling down the steps as often as running successfully along them, so the ehhif, by and large, weren't doing more than stumble occasionally. As they walked over to Saash, and Rhiow breathed breaths with her and wished her hunt's luck, Urruah looked over at Arhu, who, seeing Rhiow, was now running toward them. "You sure you want to stop with just the Met?" Urruah said, loudly enough to be heard. "I'd take him across the park, afterward. Natural History. Some skeletons there he ought to see—"
"No," Rhiow said, a touch angrily. "He's going to have to make up his own mind about what we see. Don't prejudice his opinions… and whatever it is he's going to be good for, don't make him less effective at it."
/> Urruah grumbled, but said nothing further. Arhu looked from Urruah to Rhiow, a little puzzled, and said, "What are we supposed to do?"
"Courtesy first," Rhiow said. "Hunt's luck to you, Arhu."
"I had some," he said, very proud. "I caught a mouse."
Rhiow looked at Saash: Saash flicked an ear in agreement. "It got into the garage this morning," she said. "Out of someone's car: I think it had been eating some fast food crumbs or something. He did it right in front of Zhorzh, too. Very clever." She threw him a look that was half-amused, half-annoyed, and Rhiow put her whiskers forward in slight amusement.
"Well, good for you," Rhiow said. "Nicely done. Let's go in, then, and see the gods. We have a busy day ahead of us, and we want to be out of here before lunchtime." So that you won't be tempted to start stealing sandwiches out of ehhif hands…
Sidled, they slipped in through a door that some poor tom-ehhif found himself holding open for about seven ehhif-queens, one after another. Ehhif were gathering at the turnstiles where people made contributions to the museum; Rhiow and her team went around them to one side and went on up the white marble steps to the next floor. Rhiow led them sharply to the right, then right again along the colonnade next to the stairs, then left to pass through the Great Hall, and toward the wide doorway over which a sign said, in ehhif English, EGYPTIAN ART.
The light was dimmer, cooler, here. The walls were done in a shade of deep blue-gray; through the skylights above, the sun fell pale, as if coming through a great depth of time. Against the walls, and on pedestals and in glass cases in the middle of the great room, were ancient sculptures and tombs and other things, great and small, belonging to ehhif who had lived in a very different time.
Arhu lagged a little behind the others, looking in (for once) undisguised astonishment at the huge solemn figures, which gazed out cool-eyed at the ehhif strolling among them. Rhiow paused a moment to look back at Arhu, then turned to join him as he looked at the nearest of the sculptures, a massive sarcophagus in polished black basalt, standing on end against a wall. Nearly three feet wide, not counting the carven wig surrounding it, the serene, lordly ehhif face gazed at, or past, or through them, with the imperturbability of massive age.